Hunting The Broken: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 3)

by Daniel Willcocks

  “Hey! Will you keep it down over there?” Mother Wendy called over. “I’m trying to run a decent establishment here.”

  “You wouldn’t have thought so from your drinks,” Vex called back, raising a glass.

  Mother Wendy rolled her eyes theatrically. “That’s it. You’re cut off.”

  The laughter washed over them all, causing their sunburns to flush even brighter on their faces. Dylan looked at each of the men at his table and felt a fondness warm his insides. It was nice to have the company of others. For the first time in his life, he had what he considered to be friends. Real friends.

  “Easy now, boy.” Caitlin sat in her quarters and unfolded the governor’s map on the table. The yellowing piece of parchment cracked and popped as she lay it flat on the wooden surface.

  The map was ornate, detailing a fair chunk of the surrounding land. Kain had found it in the governor’s quarters, and it had led to Caitlin’s arrival at Ashdale Pond. She ran her finger gently over the pen marks which circled and crossed Ashdale—her only clues to Governor Trisk’s location. If it hadn’t been for Trisk’s little slip up in leaving it behind, she wondered whether she’d have found him again at all.

  Jaxon ran in circles around Caitlin’s chair, eventually settling himself by lying across her feet. She reached down and tousled his fur, thankful to have a companion with her who gave her a moment of peace. As much as she loved Mary-Anne, Kain, and the others, it was sometimes nice to have a bit of quiet.

  “United we stand…” Caitlin said to herself, dragging a pen across the map’s surface to color in the road which now allowed traffic and an easy path from Silver Creek to Ashdale. Her first stamp on the world to say, “That’s right, we’re here, we’re taking no more of your shit, and we’re bringing the world together. What do you have to say about that, huh?”

  Bringing the world together. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard the saying before, nor could she remember its end. But it seemed appropriate in that moment.

  There were other small towns and settlements listed on the map. Small circles had names sketched beside them, but Caitlin knew the document wasn’t entirely accurate. On her limited journey thus far, she’d already discovered a mammoth junk pile out there in the forest. A series of mounds and piles of old trash had been collected, gathered, and fashioned into a mini-city of sorts which Joe—Psycho Joe, as Kain affectionately referred to him—had made his home in.

  She wondered what else was out there to discover.

  “Well, Jax,” Caitlin said. “I guess, since stage one is over, it’s time to get the troops back on the road.”

  Jaxon’s ears pricked up, but his eyes remained closed as he dozed on her feet.

  “You’re right. Maybe some sleep first.” She grinned. “Silly pooch.”

  Caitlin leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She could hear Mary-Anne breathing deeply in the pitch black of her bunk. Kain grunted, snored, and rolled over somewhere in the governor’s quarters. Christy and the others had taken residence in one of the many other side rooms Trisk had once claimed for himself.

  As sleep began to wash over Caitlin, her mind worked in overdrive. How many other folks were really out there in the forest, struggling to survive? Were they, too, brainwashed by the fading will of a governor now gone? How many settlements of people were unaware that the world wasn’t all zombies and death and that other groups existed?

  She thought once more of the map, remembering the tiny markings which indicated the apparent locations of several other vampires and Weres out in the forest. A skull with fangs and glowing red eyes. A crescent moon symbol out in the thick of the trees.

  How had Trisk known they were there? Had he tracked them the same way he had tracked Mary-Anne and caught Kain?

  I guess we’ll find out, Caitlin thought as sleep washed over her and her dreams turned to sweeter things.

  Chapter Three

  Silver Creek Forest, Old Ontario

  When morning dawned bright and clear, Caitlin assembled the CoR and gave the orders.

  “Right, then, maggots!” she jested, watching confusion wash over their faces.

  “Who invited the sergeant?” Vex asked, nudging Belle with his elbow.

  “Here!” Tom said, stamping one foot and saluting Caitlin to the amusement of the CoR.

  When the laughter faded, Caitlin shared her plan.

  They were to divide into smaller groups. Christy, Jamie, and those they had brought with them were to return to Ashdale Pond. Sullivan was to stand guard at Silver Creek alongside Vex and Belle to keep an eye on their new open-door policy. Caitlin was keen to enforce it firmly now that the road was built and the paths between the two towns clear. Also, she was determined to ensure that there were no more mishaps with the remnants of Governor Trisk’s old guard force—something Ash and Alice remembered well from their scrap with a former guard trying to raise a rebellion.

  Dylan, Ash, Alice, and a handful of the Revolutionaries were tasked with taking a copy of the governor’s map and exploring the forests to see what other villages and settlements remained and if there was a way to unite them all. And finally, Caitlin, Mary-Anne, and Kain would set out alongside Joe, Jaxon, Tom, and the recently widowed Laurie to check out the possible vampire and Were sightings listed on the parchment.

  “Good thing, too,” Mary-Anne said to Kain, studying the way Alice stared daggers at Laurie. “Leave them two alone in an enclosed environment and see who comes out on top.”

  Kain snorted behind his hand. “I’d let them both on top.”

  “Does anyone have any questions?” Caitlin asked.

  “Just one.” Caitlin watched Vex carefully, noticing the way Belle tried to slap his arm down. Clearly, they had discussed something already.

  “Yes?”

  “How come it’s always you three, and then some?” Vex demanded, pointing at Caitlin, Kain, and Mary-Anne. “What if we want to go with you and find some new villages and towns to save? Me and Belle are wasted here.”

  “Hey, fucknut,” Kain answered. “If Kitty-Cat has put you here then it’s for a reason, all right?”

  Caitlin rolled her eyes. Did Kain always have to be so brash? “Safety in numbers, Vex. I need the best fighters safe and protecting our home. We can always send someone back if we need backup, but don’t you think if I bring several dozen fighters marching through the forest that that’d draw more attention than we need? Lord knows what we’ll find out there.”

  “But eyepatch and blondie get to tag along?” Vex snorted, nodding at Tom and Laurie. “What makes them so special?”

  “They know when to shut their mouth,” Belle retorted, slapping Vex on the chest.

  He looked as if he had something else to say, but after a look from Belle, he closed his mouth.

  “Any more questions?” Caitlin asked. “No? Good. Let’s get rolling.”

  A couple of hours later, Caitlin and her company were out in the forest, and she considered the strange feelings this evoked. She almost felt like she’d missed the outside world. After living in the openness of Ashdale Pond and spending several months on the packed earth of the new High Road, there was something about the forest that felt almost like home.

  They wandered through the brush, pulling aside the tangles of vines and branches, stepping over rampant bracken, and batting away clouds of flies. Mary-Anne was protected from the stings and the bites in her black all-in-one, but that didn’t protect her from the irritating whine of the buzzing.

  “Do these things ever shut up? You don’t get this shit at night time.”

  “Nope. But at least you can see where you’re going,” Caitlin replied.

  There came a grunt behind her as Kain caught his foot on a root and tripped.

  “Well…sorta.”

  Guided by the position of the sun, they headed south-east. The journey, for the most part, was uneventful as Tom and Laurie marveled at the sights and sounds around them. Over the years, the change in climate had a hug
e effect on the forest, empowering it to grow and swell over the top of the reminders of the old world. They navigated around rusted cars seemingly melted into the ground. Shapes of old buildings, no more than crumbling walls and rubble now, were choked by the rampant growth. The group progressed slowly, Kain taking the lead now and then to sniff the air with a wary expression. Finally, when they had all tired of what seemed like an endless struggle with virile nature, he stopped abruptly.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” Kain said, a smile splitting his face. “I thought the path was familiar!”

  He ran ahead into the clearing, Jaxon sprinting at his heels. The wide area seemed cut out of the trees, and the grass was shorter. He sprinted straight towards the abandoned airship where he, Caitlin, and Mary-Anne had spent some time a few months previously, training to take on the governor and his men at Silver Creek.

  Tom shaded his one good eye with his hand and looked at the ship in awe. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “That depends what you think it is,” Caitlin said.

  “It looks like a friggin’ airship,” Tom said softly. “I’ve heard tales of them, y’know? There used to be a time when they filled the skies, commuting people across the world. I’ve heard stories of many of them in a place called New Toronto. Some even traveled over the seas to the distant lands beyond.” He walked as if entranced. “I thought they were just a folk legend. I can’t believe they’re real.”

  Joe chuckled and slapped his knee.

  Laurie flicked her hair behind her shoulders and adjusted her bow over her shoulder. “It’s pretty impressive. I’ve never seen anything so big before.”

  Caitlin sniggered.

  “Really?” Laurie said.

  “Sorry, but you make it so easy.”

  Jaxon began to bark, the sounds cutting through the clearing.

  “Hey!” Kain shouted, now standing on the deck of the ship. It lay slanted at a fairly sharp angle where it had once crashed into the trees. Though some vines and brush had grown against its sides, for the most part, the airship was in pretty good shape.

  Caitlin remembered her nights sleeping in the captain’s quarters far below the deck, her Revolutionaries training and snoozing around her. For the first time in her life, she had felt whole. Ready to take on the world and make a difference for the better.

  “What?” Caitlin called back.

  “Did you invite some party guests?” Kain asked, leaping off the deck and back onto the grass as several decaying heads poked out from the holes in its surface and began to claw at the wood. “I thought we were special.”

  “Lunas!” Joe cried.

  “We’ve told you, Joe. They’re Mad,” Mary-Anne scolded.

  Caitlin rolled her eyes and drew Moxie from her belt. “How come it always seems like you’re getting us in trouble?”

  “They were here before I could do anything,” Kain whined.

  The Mad clawed desperately against the wood, slowly gaining purchase. It looked as though they must have stumbled upon the ship and fallen through the holes in its surface. They cried and grunted as their instincts drove them towards the flesh sacks with shiny weapons.

  Flesh sacks, Caitlin thought, remembering what Mary-Anne had called her when they first met. Now there’s a blast from the past.

  Caitlin rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. “Come on, then. Let’s take out the trash.”

  “You know that’s very unprofessional, right?” Dylan mocked, turning from his position at the front of the party to nod at Ash and Alice.

  They looked at each other, blushed, and unlocked their hands. “Sorry.” Ash grinned.

  “I’m only kidding,” Dylan said. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of love in this Mad world. If anything, I think we could do with a lot more of it. It’s people like you who will keep our population up and introduce our next generation of offspring into the world. We’ve got to keep those numbers up. Without love and babies, we’re little more than rats voluntarily walking into a barrel of acid.”

  “Now there’s a visual,” a broad man with a shorn head and cleft in his chin chipped in.

  Dylan winked at Huckle and studied the others.

  Walking beside the almost-giant was a man with dark skin and an untidy afro who walked with a limp. Ben was a sharp-shot with a tomahawk and had happily helped himself to an ancient ax out of the weapons Mary-Anne had delivered to the airship all those months before. Immediately behind the two men was a woman with fiery red hair and an expression on her face that screamed, “Don’t fuck with me.” Flo had been pretty silent for the most part but would occasionally pipe up if the conversation demanded it.

  Dylan had seen the three of them before out on the battlefield of Ashdale and getting stuck in with road construction. Up until this moment, though, he had always thought of the rest of the Revolutionaries as Caitlin’s property, not really bothering to interact all that much.

  Now, they were his soldiers.

  “I spy with my little eye,” Ben said dryly, “something beginning with ‘T.’”

  “Let me guess. Is it ‘trees?’” Flo said.

  “Piss off,” the dark man said, bringing his knee up high to step over a tree which had fallen and was now covered in an array of mushrooms and ivy. “Why would I make the damned thing so easy if I didn’t want you to guess it straight away?”

  “I’m just saying. It’s all I can see.”

  “Wow,” Alice said under her breath. “And they thought we had sexual tension.”

  “What was that?” Flo asked, an edge of belligerence to her tone.

  Ben chuckled but stopped suddenly when he realized what Alice had said. “What? Me and her? Ew.”

  The rest of them laughed.

  “Besides,” Flo said, “I thought we were discussing you two and your future baby.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said, eager to change the subject. “When’s the little one due? Can’t be long now, eh? You’ve been shacking up for long enough for one of those swimmers to have crossed the finish line to cheers by now.”

  Alice shrugged. “You know, we figured that we’d get rid of as many pricks as possible before bringing another life into this world. Maybe once you’re dead and gone, we can look at that possibility.”

  Ash laughed and wrapped his arm around Alice’s shoulder, and left Ben standing with an open mouth.

  “Boy, you sure walked into that one,” they heard Huckle say as Ash and Alice rejoined Dylan at the front of the procession.

  They moved on through the foliage, and Dylan pulled out a folded piece of parchment from his pocket. It was fresher than Caitlin’s map, though the sketching of the landscape and locations was a lot more amateur and cruder as if a child had tried to copy the map but didn’t have too much of a grasp on their pencil.

  “How much farther?” Ash asked.

  “We’re almost there,” Dylan said. “About a klick in that direction.”

  “What the fuck is a klick?” Alice asked.

  “Oh,” Dylan said. “It’s a term we used when I was a ranger. I’m not a hundred percent sure of its actual meaning, but we always took it to mean not far.”

  Dylan swept aside a curtain of ivy, noticing the remains of several houses nearby. Their walls and roofs had molded and rotted away to reveal the peeling wood of a living room and what might have been an old kitchen. A family home. The thought seemed to strike an odd chord somewhere within.

  “You two ever really think about kids?” Dylan asked quietly enough that those in the back couldn’t hear.

  Ash and Alice exchanged a glance.

  “I guess,” Ash said. “Someday, maybe. Would that be such a bad thing?”

  Dylan pondered it for himself. He couldn’t imagine the idea of bringing a newborn into this world. Not least because he was miles away from a relationship with any particular woman, but with a world crawling with Mad and the horrors he had seen, was that something he’d ever want to subject new life to?

  The world’s got to keep on
turning, Dill.

  “Besides,” Alice said. “You’re right, y’know? People can’t stop having children because of the Madness. If we’re fighting for freedom and the survival of humankind, then the next generation will be part of that. You never seen fresh kiddies in Silver Creek?” She raised her eyebrows to suggest that she was being rhetorical.

  “I suppose,” Dylan said.

  “Just imagine it,” Alice said, looking up into Ash’s eyes and rubbing her stomach. “A wee little baby floating around in my tummy.”

  Ash’s face grew red. “Yeah…imagine…”

  Dylan and Alice laughed as they forged on ahead. Eventually, Dylan slowed, warning the others behind him to quiet their voices and footsteps as they heard murmurs and chatter from somewhere ahead.

  He shaded his eyes. A small distance ahead, he could make out the shapes of several men and women standing in a clearing.

  “Here we go,” he said, his hand on his sword.

  The others followed suit.

  Chapter Four

  Silver Creek Forest, Old Ontario

  Darkness fell across the forest as the sun set. The sounds of crickets, bugs, and creatures resistant to the colossal changes of the last few centuries issued from the foliage.

  “I’m starving,” Kain complained as he prodded the fire with a stick.

  “If you’re that hungry, why don’t you go and hunt your own food?” Tom asked. “Surely a Were such as yourself could do that easily? Go on, get down on all fours, turn into a wolf, and grab us a badger.” He grinned, revealing a row of yellow teeth.

  “No. It’s fine.” Kain looked sulkily at Caitlin. They both knew the real reason he didn’t want to transform. Since the Madness fell, it became increasingly harder for Weres to switch between forms. Each transformation became slower and more painful until the Were was forced to choose which form they’d like to stick with for the rest of their lives—human or animal.

  “Then don’t complain,” Tom said, munching on a handful of berries he had found in some bushes at the edge of the clearing.